Auto download custom models?

I’ve got a server that I run for some friends. We have lots of custom maps, which download fine when auto download is correctly configured in the clients.

We’re interested in adding some custom character models. From what we’ve been able to determine, a given model needs to be both on the server and the clients in order for it to be visible to everyone.

But I haven’t been able to figure out how clients can automatically download the custom models.

Is there some way to do this, or will we have to just make sure everyone has the same set of custom model files locally?

On a related note, while experimenting with a custom character model with another friend, we found that the first time he spawned in with a custom model he ended up with the default model for the map, not the custom one. He had to die first before the model loaded.

After searching I found mention of the cg_deferPlayers cvar option. Apparently people like to set this to 1 to prevent lag when a user connects.

I can set this to 0 if it will mean that the model is immediately loaded. I don’t care that much about people leaving and re-joining because typically we play together as a semi-organized event.

Any suggestions around best practices for custom models would be appreciated.

I have a project which is a modified ioquake3 engine which supports adding custom pk3 files to the download list on the server.

The project link is here and the documentation on download list customization is here, even though I don’t currently have an example that covers this exact scenario. Basically you would need to run the modified engine on the server (you can use a build from the Github release page on Windows or build from source on Linux), then modify the fs_download_manifest cvar to include the custom character model pk3s. Then any clients connecting with cl_allowDownload set to 1 on the client will automatically download them.

I could give you more information if you are interested in this approach.

1 Like